HyperGunner – level / wave design theory

HyperGunner is turning in to something to be proud of. I’m very excited to be developing it just now and am thoroughly enjoying assembling different game elements – scoring multipliers, power-ups, hyperspace bonus phase etc. What I’m most thrilled about is the pace of the action. When I first started assembling the game code based [...]

My organic design document

I don’t know how interesting this is for people but it struck me as interesting just how many game developers (inparticular those that make very casual games, such as myself) write design documents. I had a quick look around the web last night for fellow casual game designers and stumbled upon some interesting discussions. Apologies [...]

Brief analysis of Atari’s Gauntlet – Monster Movement

I am focusing my efforts on the behaviour of the monsters in my Gauntlet-esque game. I want the player to be able to move freely shooting anything that comes at him. Similarly I want the monsters to move convincingly around the level effectively trying to sniff out the player. I decided to take another closer [...]

A rethink on the level design / goals of “Castle Adventure 2″

I took a time-out to explore some game design ideas. To start with I needed to write down what I had come up with so far with my game. I then mapped that on top of what I originally set out to create. The results were interesting. So far I have created the following game [...]

Building levels and refining the game experience

At some point the thrill of solving game design issues will give way to that final slog of packing the whole thing up in to a playable game. Such things as title screens, game over presentations and handling certain gamey elements. I also need to consider what happens after level x (where x = the [...]